Every day is a good day
2019-2021
a selection of 18 images out of a 30
“It is the first Monday of the month, I’m going to visit it, who has, in a way, become a friend. It is five in the morning when I wake up. I had prepared my bag the day before, but I still check that I have all my equipment. I drink a glass of water. It is 5:20. I leave my house. I take the metro first, then a train, a second, a third, then a bus ...
I still have to walk a good half an hour before arriving at my destination. From the parking lot, I climb the steps of the mountain. It is nine o’clock, I finally see the platform from where I take my photography.
There, I set up my tripod, put my 4x5 camera, I dive under the focus cloth and prepare myself to shoot.
Here I am, again, ready to draw the portrait of Mount Fuji.
This protocoled, nearly scientific, observation of a romantic subject, threw repitition, slowly became a spiritual act, a photographic ritual. I perform it to the rhythm of an old Japanese calendar of 24 seasons of two weeks each. One image per season. Whatever the weather.
Every day is a good day (Hibi Kore Koujitsu 日 々 是 好 日) tells us the Zen monk Yunmen Wenyan.“
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From representations of the Lascaux cave to modern times, art has been intrinsically linked to the spiritual. Art seems to have been born in religion. It was a continuity of the spiritual aspect of the community. Secular art always seems to come later. Since photography was born during the first industrial revolution, it had very little links with the spiritual.
I search for a possible link between photography and spirituality.
A large format camera requires a discipline, like zen. Photography is a humble medium as it depends on something we can only accept: reality. Observing the seasons, the unspeakable, the life of a volcano, establishes an intimate relationship filled with humility, with what is much more than what we are.
“Every day is good day” teaches us that one shouldn’t be concerned about things he cannot control, symbolized here by the weather. In everyday life, one should accept the day as it is, whether bad or good. It is up to oneself to make it a good day.
I waited for the trees to grow some leaves again. Showing what seams to us an eternal cycle that has neither an end or a beginning. Time decided of the length of the work.